Together, the affluent couple live a lavish lifestyle and maintain a ritzy restaurant. However, their lives are disrupted when Tori reemerges at her husband’s doorstep after being missing for five years and declared dead.
Luckett admitted that the role triggered some deep-seated emotions but was also liberating, which drew her to the role.
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“I felt like she was different from any character I've ever played. I'm used to being suited and booted and glammed and all the things [but] Tori was the complete opposite of that, you know what I mean? Her story was so layered - going through such a traumatic experience, coming out, finding her way back, and going after what she asked, ultimately, what was hers,” Luckett explains.
I felt like she was different from any character I've ever played. I'm used to being suited and booted and glammed and all the things [but] Tori was the complete opposite of that, you know what I mean? Her story was so layered - going through such a traumatic experience, coming out, finding her way back, and going after what she asked, ultimately, what was hers.
“She was fighting for her life. I think that there are so many people out there that are, you know, going through traumatic situations or feel like they're fighting the good fight alone. I wanted to play this character or help in telling the story to let them know, ‘Nope, you're not alone. You're not by yourself. There are other people suffering, other people going through it, other people climbing the ladder, feeling like they're going nowhere.’ But then, somehow, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Luckett’s empathy for her character, Victoria, also propelled her to do a deep dive into her complex background and mysterious return in preparation for filming. The two-time Grammy award winner also took time out to speak to women who were domestic abuse survivors in shelters and were undergoing treatment for their traumatic experiences while also tapping into her experiences.
“I found myself tapping into some things that I thought I had healed from, and it wasn't until they yelled, cut, [that] I was still crying. I was like, ‘Wait a minute, hold on,’” she says.
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“If I use that as motivation, and I'm still feeling it as though it happened yesterday, and it probably happened years ago, I my might need to call my therapist, we might need to talk about some things, or just kind of revisit some things, but I really just allowed myself to be open and free and not judge her character and not put the emotions that I was feeling for her and to honestly just step into her experience as best I could.”
Her performance reflects the time she spent understanding the nuances of her character, especially Victoria’s motivation to actively pursue all that she lost during her five years away. When asked if women should feel entitled to go after what they deserve, Luckett answers a resounding ‘yes.’
“Why not? Men do it every day. Why not? It's almost a thing that women have, this nurturing spirit, and they want to take care of everyone before they take care of themselves. I think that we do a disservice to ourselves by doing that,” she says.
“We can't keep trying to pour and give and be okay with operating out of an empty glass. You know what I mean? And taking second best, like, I'm glad that we are finally waking up, and I feel like the rest of the world is waking up from that to just being a common thing that women have to sacrifice themselves and everybody be okay with that or not get what the man next to us, who probably isn't as capable of the job, him getting more. No, go ahead and go get what’s yours, and when you get the ‘no’ the first go around, try again, and turn that thing into a ‘yes,’" she emphatically states.
Why not? Men do it every day. Why not? It's almost a thing that women have, this nurturing spirit, and they want to take care of everyone before they take care of themselves. I think that we do a disservice to ourselves by doing that. We can't keep trying to pour and give and be okay with operating out of an empty glass. You know what I mean? And taking second best, like, I'm glad that we are finally waking up, and I feel like the rest of the world is waking up from that to just being a common thing that women have to sacrifice themselves and everybody be okay with that or not get what the man next to us, who probably isn't as capable of the job, him getting more.
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As the newlywed previously said, she had to protect her mental health during filming by being in contact with her therapist. She admits that she began seeing a therapist around the age of 19/20 to deal with her claustrophobia and soon realized she needed to unearth some childhood trauma, “Baby, I haven’t been able to let her go since,” Luckett says.
“I feel the biggest part of self-care also is listening to oneself. If your body is saying ‘sit down, [then] sit down.” If your body is saying, ‘hey, the stress is getting to be too much,’ then we have to use our wisdom and awareness to believe what our body is telling us. I'm starting to finally listen to myself and trust my instincts and trust what my body is saying.”
Luckett's self-awareness also aids her in motherhood as she cares for her two young children. She reveals that she cherished quiet moments before having children and takes the time to give herself a break. The 43-year-old actress also listed going to the spa and disconnecting from her phone as another vital self-care go-to that she incorporated into her day-to-day life.
“I have made it a point at least twice a month to go into my favorite spa, shutting my phone off. I mean logging off completely and being okay with it. We let our phones control us, and especially with social media we have this fear of missing out on what's going on in the world, and we don't know how to detach from that,” she says. “I feel like a form of my self-care recently has been, for real, detach, let go. Let those people out there on social media live their lives and I want to be present in mine.”
Luckett admits she isn’t slowing down soon as she has more projects on the horizon, like her fashion capsule In The Trunk (a statement she made on the Terrell Show) that now has t-shirts and hoodies for sale. “When I said it, so many people came up to me and we're like, ‘Yo, that line changed my life. Like for real. It really helped me to kind of get out of my own way.’ So we made a shirt, and it is available on my website.
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"We have two colors right now, which would be the cream, and black. I can't wait for hoodie season because I'll rock it at the airport right now. When I tell you I can't go nowhere and somebody not say, ‘Oh my god, I love your shirt. Oh my god, I love your hoodie because of what it says and the cute little graphic that I came up with.”
She intends to expand her line by Christmas. In addition, fans can also anticipate the return of her YouTube channel “Leave It to LeToya” within the coming months.
“Of course, we're promoting the film right now. So August 3rd is a big day. But I love connecting with my people via my YouTube page and also my Instagram, so I will definitely be coming back with a show, but it'll be based around my life, being a single mom and raising the two littles and asking the hard questions and my healing process, my journey, having more conversation with my therapist, all the things that people loved. We're going to be getting the ball moving on that again,” she assures.
Be sure to tune into the anticipated thriller I Thought My Husband’s Wife Was Dead, which debuts Saturday, Aug. 3, at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
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Feature image by Marcus Owens
Tonya Lewis Lee has become a staunch advocate of ensuring that the American public is cognizant of alarming statistics that show "Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women" even though 80% of "pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Bias, racial and gender inequities are prevalent in the American healthcare system, including other disparities such as "quality healthcare, underlying chronic conditions, and structural racism," all impair marginalized patients from having the same opportunities to receive care to uphold their "economic, physical, and emotional health," the CDC reports.
According to the organization's report, approximately 700 women die in the U.S. from pregnancy or various other pregnancy-related complications. Recently, in Detroit, Michigan, Alona White, a 25-year-old mother, died after giving birth to her second daughter; White succumbed to an emergency craniotomy that caused her brain to bleed. As a patient at Ascension St. John Moross, White underwent a C-section, a medical procedure that Lee’s documentaryAftershock also explores and shows the financial benefits hospitals and doctors reap from this particular surgery, even though it may not be conducive to the birthing process.
Lee, who co-directed and co-produced with Paula Eiselt, discusses through her documentary Aftershock about Black maternal health and places several human faces to those victimized by this growing health crisis. The Hulu doc, which is a part of the streaming service's Onyx Collective, initially premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Doc Competition and was awarded the Special Jury Award: Impact for Change. Aftershock follows Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, who both lost their partners, Shamony Makeba Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac, during childbirth, and how the two men, along with other family members, are in the streets providing advocacy and activism to eradicate this epidemic.
Using her background as a former human rights attorney, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, and an author of the children's book Please, Baby, Please—which she co-wrote with her Academy awarding-winning husband, Spike Lee, she uses her platform to heighten the conversation of Black maternal health.
L-R Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre
Photo courtesy of Onyx Collective
xoNecole: Based on your research, what are the factors causing Black women's death in most hospitals? The documentary did expound on it, but if you can say it in your own words.
Tonya Lewis Lee: First, I want to say that most of these deaths happening with Black women from childbirth complications are preventable. When we were making the film, 65% of these deaths were preventable. Since then, a new statistic has come out that says 85% of these deaths are preventable. When you asked me what we discovered in our research about why this is happening? First and foremost, what keeps coming through is very clear that Black women are being dismissed and ignored when they express pain or discomfort or something is not right. A lot of these deaths are postpartum.
It's frustrating because it's not like women aren't seeking help, as you see in Aftershock. The two families that we cover, the two women who passed away, each of them were seeking help from their healthcare providers. Unfortunately, their calls for help were dismissed, minimized, and ultimately led to their death. I will say that what tends to happen is there is either too little intervention too late, or there tends to be too much intervention done too soon, which, unfortunately, often causes these deaths.
xoN: Is this something that residents are taught in medical school because, like the doc pointed out, the founder of gynecology J. Marion Sims, believed Black women don't feel pain? Is this ideology still continually introduced in medical schools?
TLL: My understanding, and I've heard, anecdotally, that it is still taught in med schools today that Black people do not suffer or have the same kind of pain that white patients do, which is insane to me that we're still having these conversations. I empathize with doctors because I think they are trained in such a way--it's a patriarchal, technocratic system. They go through rigorous training, which is great, but they're also kind of dehumanized doctors, when they're going through a process so that by the time they get to their patients, they often inadvertently treat their patients in the way they have to rush, let's get through to the problem. What's the problem? Let's solve it.
I'll go back to the question you asked before about what's causing these deaths also, is that [birthing] is not woman-centered, and what I mean by that is, when a woman is giving birth, as opposed to listening to her desires and how she wants to give birth and who she needs in the room, what is she doing and how is it working for her? Unfortunately, a lot of times, it's more on the doctor's schedule, what works for the doctor, and what's efficient for the doctor. Why do we lay on our backs and put our legs up? Well, because it's easier for the doctor to get in there than allowing a woman to move around during her labor to help the baby work its way down. So the baby gets in position, and she's able to do what she wants to do. I think that a lot of education works against the natural birthing process.
xoN: Regarding the medical schools, is there any way we can change how they're instructed? How can we upgrade their curriculum on how they handle Black maternity?
TLL: I agree with you, and I will say, at least some of the good news; I see that with Aftershock, we've been invited by medical schools to bring the film. We were at Harvard and Columbia [to show the film] to their residents and converse with me, my co-director, and the film's protagonist. To your point, they need to be educated; differently, they're beginning to understand that and are looking at it [but] it's going to take a little bit of time to turn the ship. But at least there's a conversation that is starting to happen, but I completely agree with you that med schools need to start thinking about how they teach maternal care.
And again, even the midwifery programs, too, because I am a big advocate for midwives. Yet, they're not enough midwives in general in the United States, and they're certainly not enough Black midwives. So, to that point, we also need to work on the pipeline of doctors, obstetricians, and gynecologists, because there's a shortage of doctors. There's a shortage of nurses, and certainly Black nurses and doctors. We want to think about who's going to med school and how we cultivate them so that we have a workforce that can care for all of us.
Photo courtesy of Onyx Collective
xoN: To add to that point, maybe there should be a movement to have Black owned hospitals. Many Jewish communities have their own doctors and ambulances. Is that also something we need to start putting on our agenda to start creating Black-owned hospitals in these cities with a high Black population?
TLL: I think we can [have] Black hospitals; we're talking about education in general. Our issue as a community is whether we need more resources or we need to focus the resources in that way. It's worth thinking about. Looking to our HBCUs, our Black students, bringing them through to get us to a place where we could create that kind of thing. I don't think it's a bad thing. A study showed that when Black doctors treat Black infants, they have better outcomes. So I think a movement towards ensuring that we have more Black doctors, more Black nurses, a robust Black health care system to begin with, or at least doctors. Having an awesome Black hospital that's important for us would be amazing because we do not have the resources to do that.
xoN: How can we change policy as it relates to the health of Black women when they're giving birth? What can we do?
TLL: Well, the good news is policies are moving through Congress right now, the Momnibus bills, its pieces of legislation, a group of bills. One in particular that is great that I believe recently passed is making sure that women have Medicaid coverage through their first year of birthing; I think it's important that we deal with women a year postpartum because, again, as I said earlier, most of these deaths do happen postpartum. Many women who don't have coverage get lost, and they don't see doctors thereafter or are not seen. We need to ensure policies that make sure that women have the support they need. For example, doulas get covered by insurance companies and Medicaid as well.
I think midwives are really important to this process; the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have midwifery care at the center of women's health care. So we need to ensure that when women go to midwives, they can get reimbursed. So those are some policies that can have an impact. I will say voting matters because our politicians, locally at the federal level, but particularly locally, and our state and local governments are the ones that drive the policies and our communities around birthing. I think, as individuals, we need to be out there voting, ensuring women can get the support they need.
Also, to the voting piece because many hospitals in the Black communities have been divested from [offering] the services, if they do have maternal health care at all. They don't have a lot of services. So we want to make sure that our hospitals and our communities are well-resourced so that they can provide the care they need for people, especially when they're in distress.
Photo courtesy of Onyx Collective
xoN: What was your experience when you gave birth to your children?
TLL: I appreciate that question. It's interesting. When I gave birth to my children, my daughter is now 27; my son is 25. I didn't know about midwives. So I had a wonderful doctor who was a friend of the family. But even then, I look back with a little frustration because my water broke, I went to the hospital, my family was there, and it was like, 'We can just move this thing along, let's get you on Pitocin get you going,' and I did that and stayed in the hospital overnight. Then the contractions were coming hard, as they do, especially when you're on Pitocin.
They suggested that I have an epidural, which I had. Then, my lips started to numb because they told me I was only supposed to be numb from the waist down. But I was beginning to feel numb over my entire body. I told my anesthesiologist to turn it down, my lips were numb, and she kept saying, 'Well, no, if I turn it down, I have to turn it off, and you're gonna feel pain.' I was like, I need to feel something because I'm now not feeling anything. I had to get nasty with her and didn't want to do it. Because you're laying there, you're vulnerable; I couldn't move. My mother and sister were there, and then they started noticing my oxygen levels were getting weird. I was like, 'You need to turn it off, and I had to get nasty for [the nurse to] finally turn down the anesthesia so that I can at least feel something. Thank God everything was fine, and my daughter was fine. Similarly with my son, a different doctor this time, by the way, both Black women, lovely people, but in a system, right?
With my son, the same thing happened; similarly, my water began to leak, and I was saved in a way by the nurse because at one point I was pushing, and the doctor was like, 'Okay, his umbilical cord is around his neck, his shoulders are stuck,' and she just stopped. The nurse said, 'This may hurt a little bit,' She put her hands on my stomach and pushed my son out. Again, I was fine, thank God, and the children are fine, but in retrospect, I wish I had allowed my body time to do what it wanted to do, and I think I would have been fine. I don't think I needed Pitocin. I don't think I needed the epidural if I had done it that way. But that's the way I did it back then.
But I joke with my daughter that by the time she's ready, I'm ready, and we're going to get it right this time because I don't think that surviving birth is what it should be. I think we should thrive in our births and be able to have beautiful birthing experiences that are not with trauma. And I'm not saying they don't have pain, but I believe that the pain that one goes through is what we're supposed to go through. I don't think women should suffer. But as Helena Grant, the midwife in our film, says that when a woman is birthing a baby, she's not just birthing a baby, she's birthing a mother, and it's a rite of passage that we have to go through to get on that other side. So we are prepared to take care of this young life we've just brought here.
xoN: How can women protect themselves when pregnant or about to give birth in this environment?
TLL: First of all, shop around for your healthcare provider. If you go to a health care provider and you don't connect with them, then keep looking for that health care provider that is right for you. First and foremost, ask as many questions as you can ask. Remember that you're in the power seat, you should be empowered; you're about to go through something amazing. Make sure you get the support you need. No [woman] can be doing everything in the moment of labor and birthing.
So make sure you have the right energy and people around you who can advocate for you and support you the way you need during your birthing process. I was with these people through the process of this documentary. I was able to be up close and personal with people grieving from a loss but activated by the loss. I was able to be up close and personal with people going through the birthing process themselves, trying to figure it out for themselves as well. So it's been quite a journey.
Aftershock is now streaming on Hulu.
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Feature image by Keith Williams